Image: Milind Kaduskar

Ayuda

I watch their lives.
I ask the dreamer to help.
But it remains the wrong city.
Pursued by cold border.
In the day of Amara.
In the night of Ayuda.
The voice of the criminal.
Heavy run of the escape.
The next night a whistling
weak and thin below
the holes in the white shutter.

A kingdom fled the crown.
To worship a deity in the drawer.
And if I can look just like them
I can walk into the solar shield.
Where the image is an icon
beholden to melancholic light
rounding the commercial portal.
To stand as I have always stood
among the domestic windows
admiring the quiet placement
of shadow thrown memorabilia
touching the handles of the cars.

Michael Borth is a writer from The Hudson Valley. His work has appeared in Otoliths, Fence, New World Writing, Prelude, Keith LLC, Forever Magazine, Ballast Journal, ergot and elsewhere.